Long term Presidential election trends (and other stuff) (user search)
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  Long term Presidential election trends (and other stuff) (search mode)
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Author Topic: Long term Presidential election trends (and other stuff)  (Read 19041 times)
Nichlemn
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« on: November 21, 2010, 07:18:49 AM »

The other two surprisingly stable States, Nevada, Minnesota, Indiana and Wisconsin, are interesting too because they are 4 states that have trended dem in past decades.

Eh, with the exception of Nevada, not really. Your own maps contradict this - 1984-2008 has all three of those other states trending Republican, 2000-2008 has them all trending Democratic, the other maps have a mix. Also, Indiana's 2008 results involved some fairly unique circumstances including the proximity of Gary to Chicago.

 I'm not sure if you've seen Nate Silver's Electoral History Charts, but they show the absolute and relative state performances from 1948-2004. It makes it easy to see any state's trend over a long time period.
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2010, 09:02:43 AM »

The other two surprisingly stable States, Nevada, Minnesota, Indiana and Wisconsin, are interesting too because they are 4 states that have trended dem in past decades.

Eh, with the exception of Nevada, not really. Your own maps contradict this - 1984-2008 has all three of those other states trending Republican, 2000-2008 has them all trending Democratic, the other maps have a mix. Also, Indiana's 2008 results involved some fairly unique circumstances including the proximity of Gary to Chicago.

 I'm not sure if you've seen Nate Silver's Electoral History Charts, but they show the absolute and relative state performances from 1948-2004. It makes it easy to see any state's trend over a long time period.

I have exactly the same charts, except that with two decimals. Wink

Also, for Indiana you have to look so far as 1984 to find a rep trend (and if you look at earlier maps you can see that even 1984 was a kind of exception).

Relative to 2008 sure. But there was a solid Republican trend from 1988-2004. This is why I like the Electoral History Charts and not maps like these, because they can show more than two data points for each state. I mean, if the Republicans screwed up and failed to get McCain on the ballot in Indiana, there would have been a strong Democratic trend to 2008 from any other year. That wouldn't mean that Indiana was trending heavily Democratic.

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It's pretty easy for Wisconsin to have been more Democratic then than in the 2009 and 2010 Presidential elections Tongue
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #2 on: July 20, 2011, 09:11:56 PM »

Comparing Catholics might be interesting ('28 to '60, '60 to '04, maybe '28 to '04).
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2011, 10:43:15 PM »

Hi everyone ! Smiley

After a pretty long work, I have collected a considerable amount of data regarding State-by-State margins of victory in Presidential election since 1932, and these data can have a lot of applications. One of them is particularly interesting, enough to justify this thread.
Having all the swing/trend data of each election since 1928-1932, I can easily calculate long-term trends from any election to any other one. So, here, you will be able to see maps like those on the Atlas forum, but instead of being 4-year trend maps, they could be 8, 12, 20 or 80 years trend maps !

On this thread, I will post several trend maps for interesting periods (note that I will discover the results only after calculating it, so I will be able to react to them simultaneously to you). But also, I will be able to satisfy any request for a long-term trend map. Just ask me from which election to which election you want to see the trends, and I will be able to post you the corresponding map extremely soon. I hope you will enjoy it ! Cheesy

A somewhat different request: could you post line graphs of PVIs/relative margins of victory of each state? Basically, the relative electoral history tables in line graph form. It would assist greatly in any trend discussions, since we could see at a glance where a state has trended in recent elections. If you're up to it, it'd also be cool to see what the correlation between trends in successive elections are - in essence, "do trends continue?"
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #4 on: August 03, 2011, 11:27:05 AM »

Smiley Thanks!

Looking at the sharp swings in the graphs, it seems like a moving average would help determine medium term trends better.
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2011, 04:38:10 AM »

Although I think the jaggedness does highlight a key point in showing how meaningless trends over a handful of elections can be. If you cherrypick a 1996 starting point, for instance, it looks like CO has been trending significantly Dem, but it's made those sorts of swings several times before in the last 80 years. Yet, a lot of people seem to think it implies that CO almost certainly will be a Dem-leaning state for a long time.
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2011, 11:53:00 AM »

Good work! Smiley Virginia is interesting, there seems to be myth that it has gone from "Solid R" to "swing" recently, but looking at the graph there's not much change, with VA being about the same as it was in the 80s.

Indiana and North Carolina are other two Obama pick-up states where there seems to be a similar story. Nevada and Colorado are two Obama pick-up states where there has been a sharp trend since the 80s, although Nevada in particular used to be much more Democratic during Roosevelt's tenure.
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Nichlemn
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Posts: 1,920


« Reply #7 on: August 06, 2011, 09:53:09 PM »

Another interesting exercise (although probably somewhat more time consuming) would be to combine this with your work on US regions, by doing trend graphs for regions. (Actually, even raw percentages would be interesting for regions).
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #8 on: August 06, 2011, 10:11:03 PM »

Also, I like the moving average of four better than a moving average of two (that is, CPVI). I think it would do a better job of predicting Congressional voting, though as a practical matter it would be difficult to calculate for most CDs (e.g. needing to work out 2012 numbers on 1990s Census lines).
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2011, 01:01:54 AM »

I've decided I prefer exponential smoothing to a moving average, partially because I think it gives a more accurate picture and partially because it's more difficult to work out intuitively, so it'd be more interesting.

I think α (the weighting given to the most recent result) should be about 1/3. That means ~55% of the weighting is given to the past two elections, ~80% to the past four and ~90% to the past six.

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Nichlemn
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« Reply #10 on: August 08, 2011, 01:27:58 AM »

And another thing - I like the idea of halving the margin of victory, to make it more easily comparable with CPVI.
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #11 on: August 08, 2011, 04:05:59 AM »
« Edited: August 08, 2011, 04:16:37 AM by Nichlemn »

Here's my attempt at graphing New Jersey by the above rules:



"Half of Democratic margin" seems weird and arbitrary, but "difference in Democratic percentages" isn't accurate for these numbers.

I picked New Jersey because I noticed your graph had a moving average Dem trend from 2004 to 2008, despite the Republican trend from 2000-2008. With the exponential smoothing, there is still a Democratic trend but it's only 0.25 percentage points. Also, your graph has a more or less constant Democratic trend since 1992, while this one shows it tapering off after 2000, which makes sense.

We can also see how the state gets credit for its Republican past, as the 2008 PVI was still more Democratic than the trend.
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Nichlemn
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Posts: 1,920


« Reply #12 on: August 08, 2011, 04:56:10 AM »

One issue is that I don't have the relative margins for states you haven't made graphs of. So, to save me from having to calculate them myself, could I please borrow your numbers? Smiley

I'd like do:

Arkansas
Georgia
Utah

The first because I'm curious to see if Clinton's numbers give it a reasonable-looking PVI, the latter two because they're states that I'm suspicious about the alleged existence of Democratic trends in.
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Nichlemn
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Posts: 1,920


« Reply #13 on: August 08, 2011, 06:57:03 AM »

That's nice and all, but what I really wanted was the raw numbers so I could copy and paste them into Excel Undecided.
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